A Certain Magical Index Volume 2

And the terrifying part was that his blood vessels were connected. His organs hadn’t
been destroyed. It was almost like a train map. The red fluid his bared heart was
pumping passed through his outstretched arteries, reached the organs that were dotted
about, and returned back to his heart.
He still wasn’t dead.
Despite being in that state, Stiyl Magnus was very much alive.
In pieces.
The magician’s possessions, cards with runes engraved on them, whipped up like a
blizzard of sakura petals.
The groggy Index fainted atop the desk at the sight of such extremes.
“...Damn...it.”
Kamijou frantically worked his thoughts, which were on the verge of being paralyzed by
the horrific situation. He used everything he had to kill the shriek rising in his throat.
Stiyl hadn’t asked for help, even at the very end. The thing he wanted to tell Kamijou,
even knowing things would turn out this way...He couldn’t possibly put that out of his
mind.
“—You fool! You can’t possibly defeat Aureolus as you are now! His weakness is those
needles! You should know about that medical scie—”
He recalled Stiyl’s words.
(His needles… Medical science?)
Now that he mentioned it, Aureolus had been hurriedly moving his hands around as if
searching for something for a few moments now. The acupuncture needles he had kept
stabbing, over and over, into the back of his neck...Was Stiyl talking about those?
Academy City, which used drugs as part of the esper development program, had vast
pharmaceutical and medicinal knowledge that couldn’t be compared to the outside
world. Kamijou’s knowledge of acupuncture came to him like it was an English
vocabulary word on a pop quiz.
Leaving qigong and eastern mysteries aside, in terms of medical science, acupuncture
was basically a way to directly stimulate one’s nerves. The stuff could relieve pain or
control the functions of organs by triggering excitation. Back before they had anesthesia,
it was valued pretty highly as an almost-magical way of blocking pain.

189

(…But what about it?)
Kamijou mentally tilted his head in confusion. As one might guess from the fact that
needles aren’t used in modern surgery, the reality was that acupuncture couldn’t
actually bring about such dramatic effects in somebody’s body. It wasn’t like narcotics,
which could release “limiters” on your physical body or thoughts, either. The most it
could do was directly stimulate your nerves, so it couldn’t do anything more than spur
the release of endorphins, put them into an excited state, and ease anxiety, so—
(—Anxiety?)
“Change contents. Suspend firing of disguised guns. Prepare for elimination of
intruder using the blades.”
Kamijou had forgotten to keep running and was blankly staring at Stiyl’s end, but he
looked back to Aureolus at those words. The trick guns, which should have been staring
death at him, spun around and around in the alchemist’s hands.
Despite that, he couldn’t escape the one question that came to mind. Now that he had
one question, many, many others appeared and dragged him down into them.
(Yeah. Something is strange.)
It happened with both Himegami and Stiyl. They were killed with simple words, like die
and explode. If he could make everything and anything go his way, why did he need
vampires or Deep Blood? If he could make anything exactly how he wanted, why didn’t
he create a vampire with his own hands?
(Yeah, something’s definitely weird about this—!)
No, if Aureolus Izzard could really make anything and everything the way he wanted...
Then why the hell didn’t Index turn back to look at Aureolus even one time?
The ultimate Ars Magna, which distorted reality in accordance with Aureolus’s words.
That wasn’t how it worked.
What if it was a magic that haphazardly distorted reality into whatever Aureolus
thought?
“Wa...it. Is that it...?”
Stiyl had said that it wouldn’t be hard for Kamijou to beat Aureolus.

190

Aureolus knew Stiyl, Index and Himegami. Because he was familiar with them, he knew
for certain that even with their full power, they would never be able to fight on par with
him.
But Kamijou was the sole exception. He had only met Kamijou today—he was a totally
unknown quantity.
“—Wha...has your right hand annulled my Ars Magna? Impossible. I have surely
decided the death of Himegami Aisa. Does that right hand incorporate some heavenly
mysteries!?”
Aureolus was certainly nervous at the time.
And if everything was aligning with his own thoughts, then that very anxiety was...
“So...That’s it...” murmured Kamijou in blank amazement. It was nothing. Now that he
had figured out the trick, it was simple.
However…
“Hm. The source of your excessive confidence...It was that right hand, correct?”
As he looked at Kamijou, Aureolus pushed the needle he removed from his inside pocket
into his neck and looked at him casually.
“Then first, I will sever that right arm. Disguised guns, rotate your blades and fire.”
There was no sound at all.
The moment Aureolus waved his right hand, the afterimages of the trick swords were all
over Kamijou, spinning like the blades on a fan at incredible speeds. He had his hands
full just barely dealing with them.
It was impossible to describe it as “something” had “flown at him.”
One moment, the trick swords were in the alchemist’s hands...
And the next, they had severed Kamijou Touma’s right arm and hit the wall behind him.
Like a hot knife through a stick of butter, Kamijou’s right arm was cleanly sliced from
his shoulder.
His right arm danced and turned in the air.

191

There was no pain. There was no heat. Kamijou stared dumbfounded—just stared
dumbfounded at his detached right arm.
(—He cut off...my arm?)
He watched his arm fly through the air...
(—He can do whatever he wants, he could have just crushed my heart with one word.)
His face was not distorting with pain or terror, and he only had a single question...
(—But he decided to cut off my right arm first?)
He compiled all those questions and formed an idea...
(—Even though he should be able to do whatever he wants.)
Fresh blood spewed out of where he had been cut, and as if he was remembering
something...
(—Because he couldn’t do anything about this power in this right hand.)
He still couldn’t feel pain. He still didn’t feel hot.
(—He couldn’t take away my Imagine Breaker if he didn’t do something like cut off my
entire arm along with it?)
His arm spun and dropped to the floor, creating a dull sound of flesh being hit.
In that moment, his idea, born from his doubts, resolved itself into certainty.
Now that he knew what he had to do, the rest was simple.
Kamijou seemed to hear a switch being flipped in his mind.

Part 2

“Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaahahahahahaha
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah
ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah
ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha—!!”

192

.

At that moment, Aureolus involuntarily took a step back at the unforeseen event.
He had cut off the boy’s right arm, and yet he was laughing.
He thought for a moment that he had gone mad from intense pain and fear, but no. This
was no more than normal laughter, made in sureness of victory.
But what was truly strange was the fact that he could stay normal in this extreme
situation at all.
(What...is that?)
The first thing Aureolus felt was not fear but discomfort.
(I know not what that boy is thinking, but this duel was over long ago. Therefore, any
further discomfort is unnecessary. I shall kill him quickly.)
With a ting of irritation, he tossed the needle in his neck aside.
“Disguised gun, to my hands. Load out: magic bullets. Quantity: One is more than
enough.”
He waved his right hand. In reply, a rapier with a flintlock gun hidden inside
materialized out of thin air. Satisfied with his own perfect technique, he continued to
give orders.
“Usage: crushing. In accordance with the original objective of a single bullet, fire and
crush my prey’s skull.”
Aureolus pulled the trigger. The gunpowder propelled the magic bullet out, aiming for
the still-laughing boy’s eyes.
Though it was a low-velocity projectile, it would still pierce the brain if it hit the eyeball.
No human could dodge that speed, nor could one block that force.
The boy wouldn’t be able to do anything. The inside of his head would simply splatter
like a tomato.
That’s what should have happened.
“What...?”

194

Aureolus couldn’t believe his eyes. The boy didn’t do anything. He thought he had fired
the blue magic bullet accurately, but somehow, somewhere, it went wrong, passed by the
boy’s face, and struck the wall behind him.
(Did I miscalculate the distance? No...)
He declared the order once again.
“Copy previous action. Usage: blind fire. Ten disguised guns firing at once.”
Aureolus pulled ten of the camouflaged guns out of nothing, and bullets flew from their
barrels that looked like a bouquet of flowers.
However...
Of the ten bullets that should have hit him precisely, not one of them could even deliver
a glancing blow to the boy.
(A misfire!? Impossible...!)
Aureolus watched in disbelief—watched the boy who had twice avoided certain death.
An unbelievably large amount of fresh blood was spurting out of the open wound in the
boy’s shoulder. The spray was showering his face in blood as well, his face was being
painted with blotches of red.
And yet the boy was still laughing.
He laughed as if the darkness in his body had all ejected from the gaping hole left by his
severed arm.
The boy wasn’t doing anything but laugh.
Aureolus started to give a third execution order to the enemy before him, but then he
wondered.
(However, can Ars Magna even be dodged not once, but twice by pure coincidence,
without some trick?)
The alchemist halted, startled at his misgivings.
He knew the power of his technique the best. It wasn’t the gentle sort that could be
dodged by sheer luck.

195

(Wait...is he doing something? Do I only not realize it!?)
The boy, laughing in earnest jubilation, stuck out a tongue to lick his lips as if they were
covered with sauce.
Not even a fallen vampire would do that. It was like he was reveling in the taste of his
own blood.
(What...is this!?)
That was the reason Aureolus couldn’t help but feel unease in his heart.
(What is that? He can still fight? With that body? Without his right arm? Impossible.
The possibility of that is nonexistent. He is already at the point where he would die of
blood loss if I left him here. It is fine. There is no problem. There cannot be a problem.
There shouldn’t be a problem—!)
Yes—the very moment that he felt that unease...
The boy should have been drained of all his strength after losing his arm, but he
muttered something heroically anyway. His face was grinning. He was looking at the
alchemist and grinning.
“Kh...agh. You damned knave...There is no escape from my Ars Magna. Innumerable
decapitation blades into position. Sever his head from his body immediately!”
With those words, many giant guillotine blades came out of the ceiling above the boy’s
head as if they were cutting through the surface of water. Each one was a blade of
execution weighing one hundred kilograms. The hands of gravity pulled them down, but
Kamijou simply continued to smile, without attempting to avoid them or defend himself
against them.
(It is fine. He cannot dodge that. It will make a direct hit without doubt. If it makes a
direct hit, then it will naturally finish him. That was my order. I definitely ordered that. I
ordered it, I ordered it, I ordered that! Therefore, there is no problem. There is no issue,
and thus no need for concern!)
Aureolus repeated it many times in his mind. He repeated it again and again. If things
proceeded how he thought, in the way he though, then that boy would die. He should die.
He couldn’t possibly not die...but the more he thought about it, the more his misgivings
inflated. It was like those misgivings were saying that all of his words were like prayers
meant to suppress the great unease sleeping deep in his soul.
In reality, and just as he thought, the many guillotine blades made direct contact with
Kamijou’s neck.

196

He had gotten him for sure this time.
But all the guillotines shattered to pieces like sugar cubes just from touching him.
The boy was laughing.
He was looking at the distressed alchemist—mercifully, cynically, pitifully, disdainfully,
pleasurably, as if mocking him for fun.
The boy was laughing...
...With an expression that stated he’d already completely seen through to the weakness
in his attack.
(Damn...him. By what means...!?)
He no longer needed to hold back. Aureolus pierced Kamijou with a sharp, stabbing look.
“Simply die, bo—”
—But before his roar stopped, the whispers of his heart wormed their way into his mind
like noise.
(But will just that one word actually kill him?)
He fumbled with his quaking hand to bring out an acupuncture needle, but the many
needles fell to the floor in a mess.
But the alchemist couldn’t pay this any mind.
As if stricken with horror, Aureolus Izzard looked at Kamijou. At some point, the sharp
look in his eyes had been chipped into a rusty blade. Even though he wasn’t thinking it,
his legs strangely started to step back. The sole of his shoe stepped on something and
crushed it. He had broken all the needles on the floor.
Ars Magna distorted reality in accordance with his thoughts.
However, if Aureolus was to think that his trick wouldn’t work or that he couldn’t win at
the same time as his command, then even that would become reality. It was a double-
edged sword.
That was the reason he did not create a vampires or Deep Blood “in the way he thought.”
It was simple—somewhere in his brain he had thought that he couldn’t create that, and
thus he was unable to.

197

Aureolus’s words were analogous to bullets.
Various ideas would get mixed into one’s thought processes. He couldn’t give resolute
orders with something like that. It would even run the risk of self-destruction. Therefore,
he stabilized his mental image into a bullet and fired it by delivering words from his
mouth. It worked under the same principle as reciting English vocabulary words aloud
to memorize them.
Aureolus had an emergency method prepared in case things came to this sort of
situation, but...
(Damn it, my needles...Where are my acupuncture needles? Why did I drop them? It is
so that I won’t become like this, so I can kill my unease that I carry them around with
me! Without them, I am—)
Aureolus gasped.
(Without them, what? Halt, stop, do not think any more than that. I must not think
thoughts that shall lead me to whence I cannot recover—!)
The more he tried to avoid it, the deeper his thoughts fell into the hole. Aureolus was
unable to stop thinking despite understanding that. Ceasing his thoughts would mean
giving in. Like a snowman beginning to roll down a mountain, Aureolus’s misgivings
grew without limit and started to lose their purpose.
The boy in front of him didn’t say anything.
Wordlessly, silently, he began to walk toward Aureolus.
This conversely plunged Aureolus into the depths of panic.
He could not stop that boy. He did not know how to stop him. Therefore, Aureolus could
do nothing. He stood there like a scarecrow awaiting his visitation. There was no other
alternative.
The next thing he knew, the boy was right in front of him.
How ironic this scene was, that he should stand to face him with the desk upon which
Index was collapsed between the two of them.
And even despite all of that, the alchemist found himself unable to move, like a snake
had glared at him.

198

(I see. Stiyl, Index, Himegami Aisa. Every one of them was familiar. Therefore, I knew
their true power and understood beforehand the fact that they could not stand against
my Ars Magna. However—what is this boy? This is our first meeting. If I do not know his
real potential, then I also do not know whether my Ars Magna will—!)
“Hey.”
His shoulders flinched at the boy’s sudden voice, like Aureolus was a child being
lectured to.
The boy spoke.
“You bastard. You weren’t thinking that you could crush my Imagine Breaker just by
cutting off my right arm, did you?”
He bared his teeth, his eyes with such a glint that they might have fired red light from
them.
The boy spoke, sincerely delighted.
(Wha— Wait, don’t think unease ba—)
Aureolus was able to pray, but he wasn’t able to stop thinking.
In that instant...
That hole, left by Kamijou’s missing right arm...Something strange happened to the flow
of fresh blood erupting from it. Something unknown, something transparent, slowly
began to show its form, like scattering blood on a glass sculpture.
Something leaped out of the hole in Kamijou’s right shoulder then, and it was certainly
not a human arm.
It was a jaw.
It was like nothing he’d ever seen before, save in legends, for it had a length of more
than ten meters and a ferocious brutality. It was the gargantuan, gigantic jaw of a
dragon king—Dragon Strike.
He should not have been able to see it, for it was transparent, but it was covered in blood.
As if it were the boy’s own arm, he slowly opened its mouth, lined with fangs like saws.
As if he was saying that this was the true form of the power packed into his right hand.

199



One of the fangs made contact with the air.
Nothing particularly large changed. However, something he couldn’t see had definitely
been altered. Though the alchemist’s presence had been filling the room, it vanished, as
if his very initiative, the ownership of this area, had been modified.
(Wha...)
Aureolus looked up in spite of himself to the distasteful planetarium of human flesh,
created with Stiyl Magnus’s skin and blood. The carnage spread about the room began to
slither toward one point...as if his order had been canceled.
(It...can’t be. He is coming back? The same as Himegami, who I already destroyed—!)
The moment he thought that, Stiyl dropped to the floor, not a scratch on him.
Icy fear stabbed into Aureolus’s back.
Without a doubt, his own insecurity had revived the magician.
(Wait, this is no more than my unease, calm down, erase unease and I can erase this
ridiculous thing—!!)
Desperately biting down on the terror about to claw out his heart, Aureolus attempted
one last resistance. This scenario should have been no more than something created by
Aureolus’s own misgivings. So if he calmed himself down and got rid of this anxiety, the
strange power in the boy should also disappear.
But the light of the transparent dragon king’s shining eyes was brought to quietly glare
at him.
That was all it took to give Aureolus the illusion that his vision was fading from terror
alone.
(I can’t...There’s no way...)
Immediately after thinking that, the jaw of the dragon king opened as wide as possible
and devoured the alchemist from the head down.

201

EPILOGUE

Deep Blood Encroaches.
Devil_or_God.

“I wonder about it every time, your body is strangely fantastic, isn’t it?” said the middle-
aged doctor with the frog face in the completely white hospital room.
“...”
Kamijou couldn’t figure out how to respond, and his gaze fell to his own arm on the bed,
tightened with a cast.
His right arm that had been cleanly and completely severed by Aureolus’s Ars Magna.
The fact that it was an extremely clean cut was fortune in the midst of misfortune,
though. There was no damage to the cells in that cross-section, so the medical staff had
performed emergency procedures and stuck his arm back in. As it was stabilizing, the
arm was connected completely after only a day.
He possessed knowledge of yakuza having their little fingers reattached after they got
cut off, but he had never given a thought to whether you could do the same with much
larger body tissue, like that of an arm. Well, if he did have that sort of unsavory
knowledge, Kamijou would start to seriously begin doubting his past self.
“And to add to that, you’ve had two hospital visits within the last ten days. That will
always cause rumors to sprout among the nurses, you know? Could it be that you’re into
nurses?”
“...What are you talking about? I have no risky ideas about being played around with on
the operating table or anything.”
“Is that so? That’s too bad. I thought I had finally run into someone with the same tastes,
you know?”
Kamijou looked at the frog-faced doctor silently. All of his will to be in this doctor’s care
flew out the window when he considered that he had become a doctor for those reasons.
He really wanted to hit the emergency call button.

202

“Hm? Just so we don’t have any misunderstandings, I’d rather play around than be
played around with, all right? And rather than the operating table, I’d rather it be the
delivery tab—”
“I’d rather not hear about your obsessions...Wait, I mean, shut the hell up! Quit making
weird gestures as you explain it! Why isn’t a nurse taking care of me!?”
His hand really went for the nurse call button this time.
The doctor gave a dejected look, left him with an “I’m leaving”, and went out of the
hospital room.
(Why do I get the feeling that he looked really disappointed...)
Someone else came in as a replacement.
It was the man ridiculously ill-suited for modern Japan, Stiyl Magnus.
“I have no interest of cooperating with you for the moment or to make friends. I just,
well, came to check up on you.”
“...Wait a second. I, Kamijou Touma, would seriously and respectfully like to throw a
question out there. How and why the hell are you just gallivanting about?”
Stiyl groaned and scowled in sincerity, then fell quiet.
If there were a need to compare injuries, then there was probably no person injured
grosser than he was.
His body was filleted into small pieces of flesh, but he was still alive. His blood vessels
had remained intact and his blood still circulated to his exposed organs. That was a
pretty unique experience.
“Well, I was thinking about thanking you for your assistance, but...when I think about it,
this whole thing was absurd. All you ended up doing was making Aureolus self-
destruct.”
“Heh. That’s all thanks to the wonderful acting abilities of Kamijou Touma.”
That’s right. Kamijou Touma didn’t have the power to defeat Aureolus Izzard.
However, Aureolus used magic that would warp reality to align with his thoughts. In
that case, things were easy. He just had to get Aureolus to think a certain way...
To make him think that Aureolus Izzard could absolutely not win against Kamijou
Touma.

203

That’s what his big bluffing scheme was for...Well, in all honesty, Kamijou didn’t
remember much about what happened after his arm was severed. It was more like his
brain was going haywire from all the pain and shock rather than him consciously
thinking that he needed to act. Excessive blood loss was said to be linked to sexual
arousal by suicide enthusiasts, so that was probably the cause of his mad cackling.
But he didn’t breathe a word of that. When humans wanted to look cool, they would do
it with everything they’ve got.
“But, man, it’s crazy we both lived through that. I had an arm cut off, and you were a
flesh planetarium! I feel like I’ve been beholden to the mysteries of the human
body...Hey, wait. Why are you grinning to yourself?”
“No, no. Listen to you—seems you didn’t notice my help.” Stiyl’s grin was cocky, like he
was purely making fun of him. “You stood still and dodged Aureolus’s bullets twice after
your arm got cut off. How on earth do you think that happened?”
“...Huh?”
“It’s true that your act fooled Aureolus completely. But there was no way your bluff
would sink in right away, right? Twice, after your arm was cut off and you started your
comedy routine. Wasn’t it because you effortlessly avoided his attacks that he started to
believe in you?”
“...Umm.”
Kamijou stared blankly at Stiyl like a fool.
“You still don’t understand? Let me spell it out for you. Aureolus’s first two attacks
didn’t fail because your bluff was working. I simply used magic to screw with Aureolus’s
sense of distance.”
“What...!?”
Kamijou was startled.
“Is it that surprising? My specialty is fire. It’s really not difficult to make a heat mirage,
change where the light gets refracted, and blur his vision,” he explained like it was a
trifling matter.
“No, not that! I’m not surprised about that! You were a flesh planetarium at the time,
floating in the air! You were still able to use magic like that!?”
“Flesh planetarium, eh? Quite a merry way of putting it...But there’s no real problem, is
there? I was still alive at the time, so there’s no reason I couldn’t temper my life force to
refine it into magic power. Fortunately for me, the rune cards I had hidden scattered
everywhere when my body exploded, too.”

204

Kamijou stared at him, flabbergasted.
The incidents had involved vampires and Deep Blood...This guy here wasn’t the—
couldn’t have been the biggest monster of them all, could he?
“Leaving pointless things like that aside, I figured you’d want to hear about your own
charges, too. I just came here to explain what happened after Misawa Cram School.”
His charges.
Kamijou looked at his right hand, wrapped in a cast. The dragon’s jaw. It was nothing
more than self-destruction born from Aureolus’s anxiety, but he was driven to self-
destruction by none other than Kamijou himself.
“Oh, there’s no need for faces like that. Aureolus apparently imagined that dragon king
to be something mental, rather than something physical. The point is that he
accidentally imagined some kind of ghost, which would take his soul without touching
his body, or something like that.”
“???”
“To put it simply, you didn’t injure his body at all. On the other hand, that means you
destroyed Aureolus Izzard’s mind without injuring him at all.”
“...Is that supposed to be praise?”
“Of course it is. In short, you resolved the entire situation just by stealing Aureolus
Izzard’s memories. This was a team battle against an alchemist holing up in a stronghold,
and yet the only casualty was the one from the Thirteen Knights by the elevators. That’s
only the third time something like this has ever happened in the entire two-thousand-
year-long history of magic.”
(Should I be happy about that?)
Kamijou suddenly remembered something. He didn’t think the Roman Catholic
Church’s Gregorian Chant had gotten through unscathed. Stiyl might not remember it,
since his own memories were erased at the time.
“...And? What happened to Aureolus Izzard after he lost his memory?”
(He couldn’t possibly be in the same hospital as us, right?)
“Oh, that’s simple. I killed him.”
Stiyl Magnus answered outright, with such brevity that Kamijou thought he misheard
him.

205

“What are you making that face for? Listen up. Aureolus Izzard betrayed the Roman
Catholic Church and converted to alchemy. He made an enemy out of Academy City the
instant he confined Deep Blood and made Misawa Cram School into a fortress, plus he’s
got a bounty on his head for the forces that took on Misawa Cram School and ended up
being defeated themselves...And, of course, Index and I—rather, the witch-hunting
specialists in Necessarius—have gotten their own orders, too.”
Stiyl was speaking with irritation, possibly because he wasn’t allowed to smoke in the
hospital ward.
“Look. After making enemies out of this many different worlds, and with his memories
gone, could Aureolus Izzard really have opposed them? No—he wouldn’t remember
anything in the first place, and without anything to protect, do you think he would have
the willpower to keep on living with the whole world against him?”
“...”
“Aureolus wouldn’t be killed easily. Reprisals are one thing, but on top of that, he’s the
first person in the world to succeed at Ars Magna. Of course, many organizations trying
to search for that secret method would come looking for Aureolus to torture him—and
the worst part is that since Aureolus lost all his memories, he’d never even be able to
cough it up,” said Stiyl with annoyance. “Look. All Aureolus had left to him was either
death or a hell worse than death. If I were told to pick one, I’d recommend the former
without skipping a beat.”
However, Kamijou still couldn’t accept it.
“I can’t...agree with that. Of course I can’t. Even if that was the only way...If there’s such
a thing as a world where people laugh together by taking the lives of others, then why
the hell did we even go to that stupid Misawa Cram School in the first place!?”
That’s right. Kamijou had motivation to fight because he couldn’t agree with something.
Deep Blood was treated like a playing card, the students were used and thrown away like
cogs for the Gregorian replica and Limen Magna, and Aureolus had tried to kill
Himegami just to lash out with the anger he couldn’t endure. Kamijou tried to move
onto the battlefield without running away from it because he couldn’t forgive the
bastards who thought nothing of human lives, and yet...
If, at the very end of it all, he acknowledged someone’s death as right...
...Then Kamijou couldn’t bear the guild from wielding a fist himself.
“...”
Besides, Aureolus was definitely an unforgivable bastard, but he didn’t think he was
completely worthless as a human being.

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Because if things had really gone according to Aureolus’s plans...
Then the reason Index hadn’t turned back to look at Aureolus was because he never
wanted to “revise” her, even if it meant he was rejected. That would have been the
alchemist’s final act of humanity.
“That’s why you’re naive,” said Stiyl Magnus disinterestedly, looking away. “I said ‘kill’,
but the word has meanings other than taking someone’s life, you know.”
“Huh?” Kamijou looked at Stiyl.
Stiyl, in a really bored-sounding voice, without linking eyes, continued, “Listen up.
Aureolus Izzard lost all his memories. What if, in this situation, I were to do a little bit of
cosmetic surgery and change the construction of his face? The outside would be
different and so would the inside. Look, that person honestly isn’t Aureolus Izzard
anymore. There’s no difference between doing that and killing him, is there?”
“............Are you actually a good guy?”
“What’s that supposed to mean? I’ll have you know that I’m still an Anglican priest. My
specialty is fire, so reconstructing someone’s face is an easy feat. I just have to melt it
and then fix it back up.
“............You’re really a great guy!”
“Hm? Well, I guess that was an unexpected response, but...Wait, what!? What are you
suddenly trying to hug me for!? Stop trying to stand on your tiptoes and pet my head
like that!”
As Kamijou and Stiyl raged about the room, kicking and struggling, suddenly the
hospital room’s door opened without anyone knocking and in burst Index.
“Touma! They’re selling cantaloupe-flavored potato chips at the store! They’re rare and I
want to buy them, so I think I might want some money! ...Er...”
Index abruptly stopped moving.
In front of her were the struggling runic magician and Kamijou Touma, currently trying
to pet his head against his will because he was impressed with something.
All three of them stopped.
The world froze.
“...Touma. Sorry for interrupting you.”

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“W-wait. This is strange. Why are you looking away? Hey, don’t just leave without
responding!!”
Kamijou shrieked and desperately tried to pull back Index before she left. Well, he got
the premonition that telling Index, “No, really, I’m very attracted to your childlike body
so don’t worry!” would also be pretty socially unacceptable. Kamijou’s mind collapsed
into a wormhole of confusion.
“...”
Stiyl Magnus watched the two of them.
Kamijou and Index were in a heated debate, but it somehow looked like they were
enjoying themselves.
It was like the two of them just being there was incredibly natural.
Stiyl Magnus watched the two of them.
Not out of envy nor out of animosity. It was just because he had come all this way to
protect Index so she could smile like that. He gazed at the face of the girl he had to
defend with a satisfied expression.
Then he sighed. “I’ve got jobs piling up for after this, so I should be leaving.”
Stiyl’s tone of voice was one of boredom, but his face looked somewhat fulfilled.
Index looked at Stiyl once again and quickly hid herself behind Kamijou. She stared at
him like a detective trailing a suspect from the shadows.
Stiyl went for the room’s exit without having any particular feelings on the matter.
He chose to come all this way so she could be like that.
“Umm...”
Right before Stiyl turned the room’s door handle, Index spoke up.
Stiyl turned back. Index was probably angry. Stiyl was the one that got Kamijou Touma
wrapped up in the Misawa Cram School incident. There was no other reason she
wouldn’t heap all manner of abuse on him.
“Well, I’ll just say it. Thanks.”
And yet, that’s what she said.

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“After all, if Touma knew the building was like that, he’d definitely have gone diving in
by himself. So I think it was a good thing you were there. So—um, what’s the matter?”
“It’s nothing.” Stiyl smiled.
He didn’t say anything more. Stiyl turned back to the exit again and left without a word.
For some reason, Kamijou got the feeling that was the first time he’d seen Stiyl smile.
“Touma.”
Kamijou returned his eyes from the doorway to Index. When he did, Index puffed out
her cheeks and looked at him, possibly somehow mad at him for not paying attention to
her.
He grinned at her in spite of himself. The battlefield in Misawa Cram School had
certainly been fierce, but he had been able to make it back home. He smiled because that
feeling hit him then.
But...A question he left in the war zone came to mind.
The thing that flew out of his severed right arm—the jaw of the dragon king.
It was nothing more than a product born of Aureolus Izzard’s anxiety toward Kamijou.
That was the logical analysis. But at the same time, was Aureolus Izzard actually
thinking something that specific—that a transparent dragon jaw would spring out of his
right arm?
Though the probability was low...
What if, just what if, that monster was unrelated to Aureolus’s power?
(...That’s impossible.)
However, Kamijou thought back to Himegami Aisa. Deep Blood, Himegami Aisa, was a
girl with a special power that only worked against vampires.
If such a disturbance was caused by a girl who could do nothing except kill vampires,
then if Kamijou Touma’s right hand, Imagine Breaker, could even kill the systems of
God, then how much must it be worth?
No...
Just what was Imagine Breaker in the first place?
“Touma! I said, they’re selling cantaloupe-flavored potato chips.”

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Index’s words finally snapped Kamijou back to reality.
“Uh, right. I see...Wait, would cantaloupe-flavored chips be sweet?”
Kamijou tried to engage in the conversation that was going on and attempted a vague
smile.
(This is fine for now. Whatever kind of weird power it was, I was still able to protect one
girl through the whole thing. I can’t ask for more than that.)
That’s why things were fine for now.
For now.

♦
“Touma, Touma! Hey, you know how there was that person named Himegami Aisa in
that building?”
Index suddenly began as they were walking down the hallway toward the shop.
“Ah, that Denpa Kei6 who liked to pretend to be a magic-user? What about her? Wait,
what is it, Index? What are you looking at me with suspicion for? You’re the one who
asked.”
“...Touma, you fought for Aisa this time, weren’t you? Not for me, but for Aisa!”
“What?”
Kamijou tilted his head, puzzled. Index was saying some weird stuff all of a sudden, and
she somehow seemed really bothered about something—enough to purposely show
Kamijou her making a pouty face.
“Nothing. It’s nothing.” After Index grumbled to herself a bit, she said, “Yeah. Well that
Aisa person was actually admitted to this hospital. I just went and talked to her.”
“Uh-huh,” Kamijou said, throwing in an appropriate grunt to keep the conversation
going.
(Now that she mentions it, what is Himegami going to do from now on?)

6 電波系 or Denpa Kei is similar to the term “Denpa Onna” used in the prologue, “kei” means someone who is an
incredible fanatic of something, for example “Akiba-Kei” refers to someone who is in love with Akiba products (an
otaku); in this case Denpa Kei means that Aisa loves to act strangely (denpa) with no apparent reason at all.

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She didn’t want to attract vampires, but the Misawa Cram School barrier doesn’t exist
anymore. Apparently, she could use a Walking Church like Index for it, but Aureolus
Izzard was the one who promised to make one, and he was gone, too.
“So after talking to her about lots of stuff, Aisa is apparently gonna be looked after by
the Church!”
“...I think I’ve managed to figure out how this is going to end, so can I just say it first?”
“Gah! Someone goes through all the trouble to do some storytelling and this is what she
gets! Touma, saying the ending before the play ends totally kills it! Shakespeare would
probably stab you, Touma!”
“Quit saying people will stab me while you’re smiling.”
Kamijou took one single, quiet breath and threw out the answer that anyone at this
point would have guessed.
“You’re about to say, ‘By Church, I mean the Walking Church!’ right?”

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AFTERWORD

To the readers who read the first volume: welcome back.
To the brave souls who suddenly picked up the second volume: welcome.
I’m Kamachi Kazuma.
Now then, the afterword. It seems like depending on the person, some of you read this
part first. Apparently, the afterword is like a second summary. Or that there are people
who read the afterword first, and if it tickles their fancy, they head straight for the cash
register.
However, I’d like to advise caution to those of you who dive straight into the afterword.
It would probably not be a good idea to read it until you’ve gone through the story first.
The next thing here is an afterword meant for those of you who enjoy reading the
afterword at the end or those of you with the courage to brave spoilers.
The main concept behind this volume was a “bad end”.
To put it clearly, Aureolus is Kamijou Touma’s failed state. I tried to write this book
while thinking about what kind of person Kamijou might have become if he hadn’t
succeeded at the end of volume 1. Even Himegami had the pitiful role of the girl who
couldn’t become the story’s heroine.
So for various reasons, things were pretty brutal this time around. Contrary to volume 1,
where even the enemies would at least hear you first, the final boss—to say nothing
about the candidate for heroine—never listened to a word anyone said.
Ars Magna was the occult keyword everything developed from.
I mentioned somewhere in the story that it was the “true form of alchemy”, but that was
actually a total lie. Apparently, the first major school of alchemy, the Bohemian school
(the one famous for turning lead into gold) appeared in the later stages of the Roman
Empire, while Ars Magna didn’t come in until quite a bit later, in the seventeenth
century. In addition, at the time, the seventeenth century was kind of a dark age for
alchemy. It was a fad, where fake magicians would con nobility out of their money. In
other words, Ars Magna was just some new-age cult sort of thing that rode the tailcoats
of the alchemy boom.

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In fact, the goal of Ars Magna wasn’t to create gold or make an immortal elixir. It was
really only something like humans being an incomplete version of God, so if a human
was to train and become “complete”, then he could become a god. Obviously that all
sounds like a mess of cultic hubbub, but as you can see the term “God” in there, you can
tell that Christian culture got mixed into alchemy.
In the story itself, the spell Aureolus used that made everything in his head become
reality was closer to the Zurich style of alchemy. This mixed the original alchemy with
the psychology of Carl Jung; “doing alchemy in your head” is the gist of it.
There was another version of alchemy from Vienna, but that used some perverted
techniques called sex magic, so it’s not allowed in Dengeki Bunko (laughs).
One explanation for the abundant number of variations of alchemy is apparently that no
one knew what it originally was, but the correct answer seems to go more like this:
Alchemists would con royalty by saying they could convert lead into gold, but no matter
how long they waited, they could never produce that all-important gold. To soothe the
nobles they angered, they told all kinds of different lies.
I wrote quite a bit, but well, in the end, this is what I really wanted to say:
Despite all the investigation, the word “alchemy” isn’t really used well, huh?
I might as well have given Index a bit more time onstage and mixed in some kind of
“easy kitchen alchemy” plot. I wonder how that sort of deep theme would have done in
the story.
Finally, I want to thank the related personnel in this story.

Miki-san, who’s in charge of editing, is someone really intimidating who forced me to
write an entire novel within seventeen days. I thank you for sticking with this book until
the end, despite all the holes in it.
My illustrator, Haimura-san, is someone I’ve actually never met face-to-face before. It
would sound cool if I called him my “invisible partner,” but I really do want to meet him
and give him my thanks. For now, I’ll just practice it on paper: Thank you so much.
And to the readers who bought this book, thank you for your support. I hope that we can
meet next time. At this point, let me put my pen down.

Misaka Mikoto didn’t even have a chance to appear in this volume (tears).

-Kamachi Kazuma

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